Again, John wrote giving definite evidence of the operation of the “mystery of this lawlessness” and the nearness of its being revealed:

“Young children, it is the last hour, and, just as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now there have come to be many antichrists; from which fact we gain the knowledge that it is the last hour.

From these apostolic writings, exposing bad conditions that were coming to the surface here and there in the congregation, we can see that the apostles, during the “last hour” of apostolic care on earth, stood in the way, preventing the organizing of the “mystery of this lawlessness” into a corporate body, the “man of lawlessness.”